Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean RE-AIR: Conversations: How Women Became Poets, Gender History in Greek Literature w/ Emily Hauser
Dec 26, 2025
Emily Hauser, a distinguished Classics scholar and author, shares her insights on women in Greek literature and gender history. She discusses her book, How Women Became Poets, highlighting the absence of a feminine term for 'poet' and the cultural silencing of figures like Sappho. Emily explores how male poetic identity has overshadowed women's voices and the strategies women employed to embed their perspectives in ancient texts. She critiques misogyny in poetry and provides a sneak peek into her upcoming work, Mythica/Penelope's Bones, focusing on Bronze Age women.
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Writing Novels During A PhD
- Emily wrote novels during her PhD to make classics accessible and prove she could do both fiction and deep philology.
- She kept the novels secret from her advisor until she had a deal to avoid academic judgment.
‘Tenth Muse’ Praise That Silences Agency
- Calling Sappho the “tenth Muse” praises her while also recoding female creativity as passive inspiration.
- Hauser calls this the "tenth muse syndrome": praise that erases active female authorship.
Women Used Different Terms For Their Craft
- Women avoided feminine forms of masculine literary titles and instead coined alternative terms.
- Hauser interprets this as women adapting because masculine poet-terms had been culturally ring-fenced.